Anastasia.

First edition of Guy Bolton’s English adaptation of Marcelle Maurette’s Anastasia. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to the director of the original Broadway production, “With great affection — and gratitude for his work in bringing this play alive from Guy October ’55" beneath Alan Schneider’s ownership inscription, “Alan Schneider March 12, 1955 Lyceum Theatre.” Alan Schneider directed the American premiere of Anastasia, which opened at the Lyceum Theatre on December 29, 1954, with Viveca Lindfors as Anna and Eugenie Leontovich as the Dowager Empress; his ownership note was made at the theatre during the production’s run. Schneider was among the foremost American directors of his generation and the great champion of the postwar stage in the United States: he directed the American premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1956 and remained Beckett’s preferred American director, staged the United States premieres of Pinter’s plays from the 1962 off-Broadway double bill of The Dumb Waiter and The Collection through the Broadway premiere of The Birthday Party in 1967, and won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Direction for the original production of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Very good in a very good dust jacket, with toning to the endpapers. A copy uniting the play’s adapter and its original director.